Boasting Or Belittling

We all know how painful it is to
be forced to listen to a confirmed boaster sound off on his favourite topic -
himself. To be the captive of such a man even for a short time tries our
patience to the utmost and puts a heavy strain upon our Christian charity.

Boasting is particularly
offensive when it is heard among the children of God, the one place above all
others where it should never be found. Yet it is quite common among Christians,
though disguised somewhat by the use of the stock expression, “I say this to
the glory of God.”

Some boasters appear to feel a
bit self-conscious, and apologize meekly for their outbursts of self-praise.
Others have accepted themselves as being all their doting relatives and friends
claim they are, and habitually speak of themselves in reverent terms, as if
their superiority was a matter of common knowledge too well established to
require proof. Such a one was the concert singer who replied to a glowing
compliment after a performance, “Well, what did you expect?”

God is very patient with His
children and often tolerates in them carnal traits so gross as to shock their
fellow Christians. But that is only for a while. As more light comes to our
hearts, and especially as we go on to new and advanced spiritual experiences,
God begins to impose disciplines upon us to purge us from the same faults He
tolerated before. Then He permits us to say and do things that react
unfavourably against us and expose our vanity for what it is.

It may then happen in the providential
will of God that the very gift we have boasted of may be lost to us or the
project we are so proud of will fail. After we have learned our lesson the Lord
may restore what He has taken away, for He
is more concerned with our souls than with our service. But
sometimes our boasting permanently hurts us and excludes us from blessings we
might have enjoyed.

Another habit not quite so odious
is Belittling ourselves. This might seem to be the exact opposite of boasting,
but actually it is the same old sin travelling under a nom de plume. It is
simply egoism trying to act spiritual. It is impatient Saul hastily offering an
unacceptable sacrifice to the Lord.

Self-derogation is bad for the
reason that self must be there to derogate. Self, whether swaggering or groveling,
can never be anything but hateful to God.

Boasting is an evidence that we are pleased with self; belittling, that
we are disappointed in it. Either way we reveal that we have a high opinion of
ourselves. The belittler is chagrined that one as obviously superior as he
should not have done better, and he punishes himself by making uncomplimentary
remarks about himself. That he does not really mean what he says may be proved
quite easily. Let someone else say the same things. His eager defense of
himself will reveal how he feels and has secretly felt all the time.

The victorious Christian neither
exalts nor downgrades himself. His interests have shifted from self to Christ.
What he is or is not no longer concerns him. He believes that he has
been crucified with Christ and he is not willing either to praise or deprecate
such a man.

Yet the knowledge that he has
been crucified is only half the victory. “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Christ is now
where the man’s ego was formerly. The man is now Christ-centered instead of
self-centered, and he forgets himself in his delighted preoccupation with Christ.

Candour compels me to acknowledge
that it is a lot easier to write about this than it is to live it. Self is one
of the toughest plants that grow in the garden of life. It is, in fact,
indestructible by any human means. Just when we are sure it is dead it turns up
somewhere as robust as ever to trouble our peace and poison the fruit of our
lives.

Yet there is deliverance. When
our judicial crucifixion becomes actual the victory is near; and when our faith
rises to claim the risen life of Christ as our own the triumph is complete. The
trouble is that we do not receive the benefits of all this until something
radical has happened in our own experience, something which in its
psychological effects approaches actual crucifixion.

What Christ went through we also
must go through. Rejection, surrender, loss, a violent detachment from the
world, the pain of social ostracism - all must be felt in our actual
experience.

Where we have failed is in the
practical application of the teaching concerning the crucified life. Too many
have been content to be armchair Christians, satisfied with the theology of the
cross.

Plainly, Christ never intended that we should rest in a mere theory of
self-denial. His teaching identified His disciples with Himself so intimately that
they would have had to be extremely dull not to have understood that they were
expected to experience very much the same pain and loss as He Himself did.

The healthy soul is the victorious soul and victory never comes while
self is permitted to remain unjudged and uncrucified. While we boast or
belittle we may be perfectly sure that the cross has not yet done its work
within us. Faith and obedience will bring the cross into the life and cure both
habits.